


Tell Me We Both Matter

by ninhursag



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: F/M, Haunting, Horror, Implied/Referenced Torture, Jesse Manes is a War Crime, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Michael's mother does not forgive or forget, Psychological Trauma, Wrongful Imprisonment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-07
Updated: 2020-03-07
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:27:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23052436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninhursag/pseuds/ninhursag
Summary: Michael is avoiding Alex. Alex won't let it go. No matter what Michael does, he won't let it go.But there's someone (or something) else that won't let Michael go and it can and will destroy everything they have.A tale of psychological horror.
Relationships: Maria DeLuca/Michael Guerin, Michael Guerin/Alex Manes
Comments: 14
Kudos: 58





	Tell Me We Both Matter

**Author's Note:**

> For a Tumblr prompt that wanted Michael to hang out with Maria in front of Alex and Alex to get upset about it and Jesse to sneer about how he was right about Michael.
> 
> I'm maaaaaybe not the author for a straight take on that prompt 😂.
> 
> Sorry.

On Monday Maria tried to hold Michael's hand when they walked past the Crashdown. He caught sight of a face that looked like Alex's in a mirror like window and flinched away.

She stared at him, big eyed and hurt.

He made it up to her on his knees a few hours later, worshipping between her thighs. After, she stroked his hair, gently.

"You need a bath, Guerin," she said and he laughed. Then, "I'm worried about you." And he shrugged.

*

On Wednesday, Alex definitely saw them together. Michael saw Alex, met those dark, lovely eyes and turned away away away.

"What did he do to you?" Maria asked. "You look like you're seeing the literal walking dead."

Michael smiled, really. "All the time. I see the dead all the time now."

Maria made a face. "Thanks," she said. "You said it was over between you two."

Michael shrugged. "I said I'm seeing things that are dead, that implies over pretty strongly, DeLuca."

Thing was, it was true. Just it wasn't Alex who'd done anything to make him-- he'd just had the shit luck of being in the blast zone. Poor fucker was well out of it now.

Just a matter of convincing him.

*

"I don't love you," Michael told Alex on Friday when it became unavoidable. He didn't want to do this, remembered too damn well how it had felt when Alex was the one who told him to fuck off. But there wasn't much left to do other than say it. "Quit following me."

Alex winced, instantly. Michael swayed on his feet. "Maybe I don't love you either," he offered. 

"Well, good, hold that thought." Somewhere, behind Alex's shoulder, the pale eyed ghost of Jesse Manes, who wasn't even dead, smirked with pleasure.

Michael's mother screamed and screamed.

The noise of them was so loud Michael didn't hear Alex leave.

"I'm glad to hear you say it. You never loved him," gimlet faced Jesse who wasn't real because no one else saw fun, said. "Your kind isn't capable of love. That's why I got rid of you.*

"Yeah, well I'm still here!" Michael screamed at the empty air, not caring who gave him a side eye.

Maria came to try to take him home.

At least his mother didn't yell when Maria was in the room with him.

Not dead Jesse Manes just glared and glared. Drinking didn't make him go away, but it made him easier to ignore.

Eventually Maria was gonna get tired of this shit. Michael could see it coming.

*  
Isobel looked at him funny. "I can't get into your mind anymore," she said, when they were practicing powers. "You're getting stronger."

She was getting good at the telekinetic stuff herself and he shrugged and said, "thanks."

His mother was blonde and young and smiling today. She didn't mind Maria, but she loved Isobel. The touch of her on Michael's mind was so much gentler than he deserved when Isobel was the only one there.

It was Alex who she-- no. No. No. No. She loved him so much when he didn't think about Alex.

So he had to stop.

*

Alex was tired of running away, being run from.

Maria held down the bar alone on Sunday nights when business was slow and Michael didn't always go with her. Alex knew that and picked his time strategically. 

He wasn't being stealthy, but he snuck up on Michael anyway because Michael was sitting on his truck bed in the junkyard, with an empty bottle of acetone at his side.

And Michael looked at Alex out of red rimmed, exhausted eyes and made a helpless gesture with his shoulders. There was a splatter of dirt on his cheek that Alex wanted to wipe off but couldn't bring himself to. They hadn't touched much, and never gently, not since everything blew up, literally, along with a prison full of aliens.

The sprinkled ashes of their decade long whatever it was.

Everything.

"Dunno what you're still looking for from me, Alex," Michael said. "I'm giving you what you asked for, aren't I?"

Alex shook his head fast and painful. "How is this what I asked for?" He gestured to the distance between them.

Both of Michael's eyebrows rose and he made a face, "ends with a whimper? You said it. I didn't need to."

Alex felt his cheeks heat up. "I. Look you can't hold that against me forever. I fucked up. So have you. We both said a lot of things we shouldn't have."

Michael's mouth twisted into a half smile. "I don't hold it against you. I'm just trying to do right by you and you had it exactly right when you said that."

Alex shook his head. Michael mirrored the motion, still smiling painfully. "You don't mean that," Alex whispered. "We're cosmic. You said that, that was you. The pieces want to be together. Or were those just pretty words?"

Michael was the one who flinched. He rubbed his hand, the one that had been shattered more than ten years ago, in a gesture that was painfully familiar. Alex rubbed his stump like that sometimes, like the physicality of it didn't make sense.

The words that came out of Michael's mouth were dull and tired. "Pretty words. Yeah. A mistake. What else do I need to do to show you that? I fucked your best friend, Alex. I fucked you over. I'm a criminal piece of shit." He took a deep breath while Alex scrambled back, trying to gather his own words. But Michael was faster, of course he was. Always had them on his tongue.

Dead. Mechanical. He wasn't even looking at Alex anymore, not really. "You used to know I wasn't worth shit when I was trying my damnedest to sell you on having sex with my ass. Right, Mr fuck and run? Why do I have you glued to me now, when I just want you to go the fuck away?"

Alex winced, hard, arm going out defensively. He opened his mouth and then let it closed. Michael looked up at him with that same blank stare. "My dad, he-- no," he began. Then stopped. "I'm worried about you," he whispered. "Guerin. Michael. You look like shit."

The side of Michael's mouth quirked up. "So do you, sweetheart. You should go home. Get some sleep. Curl up with your dog, hey?"

"No," Alex said. "Not without you. I've said a lot I didn't mean. But you being my family, I meant that. Family doesn't give up on each other." Or at least that's what his last therapist had said, earnest and soft and so damned young for her age. He'd been too much for her, she'd wanted to pass him on to her clinical supervisor.

Whatever soft tiredness there had been in Michael's face vanished. "Family," he said. "Manes, you want to talk family with me? Wanna talk your dad? Your family business is misery and fear for everyone like me."

Alex found himself shuffling back. Michael let him, didn't crowd or follow and Alex noticed that, couldn't help it, with every bitter, worn down word. Michael was pushing, not following.

"I have blood guilt, huh?" Alex said, louder than he'd meant to. "That's what you see now, why you're really done with me? Sins of the father?"

Michael he just, his head, it shook, dirty curls, stubble, burnt out ashes in his eyes and he said, as if he didn't quite mean to say it out loud, "she does."

But Alex, trained the hard way to nuance, to testing and seeing iotas of emotion in everyone around him, pushing them before they could push him, suddenly, he saw-- "who is she?" He asked and Michael, his eyes went wide, real fear cracking through the dullness and he--

"Me," he said, faster, the lie suddenly so audible. "Alex, I see it. Everytime I see you, I see what happened to her, to my mom, in Caulfield, when your family kept her and tortured her. It's me. I see it."

"She touched you," Alex said,"and spoke in your mind before she died."

Michael's expression was still frantic but determined. He wouldn't be pressed. "I told you that. She told me she loved me and wanted me to run. She wanted me to live."

Alex nodded slowly, staring at Michael's face, his hands, the dirty, half listing lines of his body. "But not with Harlan Manes' grandson or Jesse Manes' son. That, she wouldn't want to see you live with."

Michael shook his head, swallowing. "She's dead, Alex. She doesn't want a damned thing anymore."

And Alex took a careful, careful step forward. "Can you feel her?" He whispered. "Her memories?" A woman alone in a plexiglass cage, crash landed in hell, lost, ripped from her child, tortured for seventy years. By his grandfather, his Dad, fuck he could see that, knew what it was like even… how the Manes men could destroy a person. They'd done it to him hadn't they?

Michael, though, he nodded, finally. "Sometimes. A lot. When you're here."

And Alex, he was close enough to touch Michael's shaking body, but not too close. "Right now?" He pressed.

Michael smiled, all ashes. "All the time, I guess. Her last gift to me. Giving me back my life and then taking it away."

"What do you mean, taking it away?" Alex asked but he knew, he knew and this couldn't be it.

"I can't look at you, without seeing what she wants me to see. What happened to her. I can't-- she shows it to me so I can't ever stop, I--" Michael's hand clamped over his own mouth. "You understand, don't you? Why we can't be together. It's torture porn and alien autopsy, the slideshow, every time I look at you. She shows me."

"She's a- a ghost or something. A ghost. Messing with your mind?" Alex almost smiled when Michael did. "I-- I've loved you. Can't she see that? Can that change anything?"

"I love you," Michael replied, the smile fading gone to unseeing, seeing something else behind Alex's body. Some interior torture. "And I always will. You're just-- you're good, but no it's not changing anything. I'm sorry but sometimes, sometimes you gotta let it go anyway. Can you let me go?"

And Alex did smile then, sharp as a knife, reaching out to not quite put his hands on skin. "No. But I can exorcise a ghost. Just watch me."

And Michael, he stopped, truly startled. "What?" He said, slowly as if he hadn't heard, had heard something but not what Alex said.

And Alex murmured, "trust me?"

Michael shook his head, wild disbelief rising out of exhaustion. "You can't. I can't."

"Since you can't get rid of me, you better let me try."

Michael looked at him and looked at him and looked at him, and Alex didn't know what he was seeing, torture and death or love or anything in between. It didn't matter. 

"I don't get a choice," Michael said, but it really wasn't a question. He kept looking and flinching and looking. "She takes you away from me or you take her away from me? Right. Ok."

When Alex finally laid a hand on his shoulder, Michael's body was stiff as new cardboard. He didn't shrug him off. He just stared off into the middle distance at some nightmare only he could see.

**Author's Note:**

> Come yell at me on Tumblr @ninswhimsy if you wanna.
> 
> I feed on kudos and comments, loooooove to hear your thoughts


End file.
